Day on, 3 missing Shimla school students found; ‘kidnapper’ held

Three 11-year-old students of Shimla’s prestigious Bishop Cotton School who had gone missing on Saturday were located at Chaithla village of Kotkhai tehsil in the district on Sunday, the police said.

The police have arrested a 45-year-old man, Sumit Sood of Kokunala village in Kotkhai, for allegedly kidnapping the children. Kotkhai is about 58 km from the Himachal capital.

The Class VI students of the boys-only boarding school were on a weekly day out along with other boarders when they were reported missing. Sources said one student is from Punjab’s Mohali, another from Karnal in Haryana and the third from Kullu in Himachal Pradesh.

The boys left the school at 12.09 pm on Saturday and did not return by 5 pm, prompting the school authorities to inform the police. On a complaint from the school principal, a case was registered under Section 137(B) (kidnapping) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita at the New Shimla police station. The parents of the boys reached Shimla on being informed that their sons had gone missing. The police launched a massive search operation and constituted multiple teams. The search led the police to Kokunala village where they found the boys from the multi-storeyed house of the accused, who had locked them inside a room.

In a statement, Senior Superintendent of Police Sanjeev Kumar Gandhi said the students had been brought to Shimla. He said they were investigating CCTV footage, phone records and a call from a California-based virtual number.

Gandhi said a “suspicious vehicle provided a crucial lead, due to which the police were able to trace the students as well as the accused”. He said the vehicle in which the students were taken from Shimla to Kotkhai had also been taken into custody.

Education Minister Rohit Thakur, who is an MLA from Jubbal-Kotkhai, lauded the police for cracking the case within a day.